School is...

"School is a building that has four walls - with tomorrow inside."
- Lon Watters

Tired? Stressed?

You'll feel better on Swisse.

Or so the ad says. And sure, you probably would feel better. Or if you don't have any Swisse tablets available, you could grab one of the plethora of energy drinks around these days. Red Bull gives you wings? We need to come back to earth.

Is it really a good thing to be able to just take a tablet and keep going? Is it a good thing that these energy drinks are selling so well in our culture? Does that tell us something?

Why do we do this?

Tiredness and stress are warning lights. They're our body telling us "You're doing too much. There's a lot on your plate. You need to rest." You can't just ignore these things, turn off the warning lights and keep going. What if a pilot did that? "Damn, another warning light. Gee that's annoying. I'll just flick that off."

Might not be a pilot for long.

I know it's just a silly metaphor, but the reality is pretty important too. We're not invincible. We're not superman. We can't keep writing cheques our body can't cash.

If you see these warning lights, for goodness sake, have a rest. And make sure you're getting at least a day of rest each week. God knew what he was doing when he designed you.

The lights are not just to annoy you.

Simple Ideas for Simple Churches

It's not always beneficial to run like a large church.

I preached at a little church recently that had about 15 people in the congregation. If you've ever facilitated a small group in a home, you'll know this is a great size group! You can have some amazing discussions with different perspectives, eat meals together, connect with the kids fairly easily, and build some great friendships along the way.

If they ran it like a small group, this church would have been alive and thriving! But somehow they felt they needed to run it like a traditional large church. They had Sunday morning services, with the pews all set up in rows, notices at the beginning, the correct amount of hymns, and sent the kids (all three of them) out the back to Sunday school while I preached to the rest.

I have no problems with this way of doing things, but is it the best way for a small church?

As a result, this little church felt like they weren't doing a very good job, but the reality is, this group of people is one of the most lovingly unified, generous churches I've ever seen. They really care for one another, and they're giving all they've got to make a positive difference in their local community.

If you're a small church, my advice is: don't try to run like a large church. You don't need to. Make the most of the amazing opportunities you have. Have meals together (a great place to gradually introduce non-church friends to the rest of the group). Get rid of the pews and have multi-perspective discussions instead (rather than hearing from just one person behind a pulpit). Get involved in each others' lives. Care for each other. Enjoy the strong friendships, from the smallest kids to the oldest grandparents - this is so much more difficult to cultivate in larger congregations.

There are HUGE benefits to being a small church. Don't miss out by trying to be something else!

Review: Story Engineering

Story Engineering: Mastering the 6 core competencies of successful writing, by Larry Brooks.

There are almost limitless possibilites when you're designing a home. Thousands of different ways it could end up. You could make it eco-friendly and build the whole thing out of bamboo. You can make it open and airy, and "invite the outside in," as Better Homes and Gardens says. You could build it on water. Or you could build it at the top of a tall tower, as a nice place to keep wayward princesses.

But however you do it, there are some basic structural elements that EVERY house must have. As I was singing with my 1-year-old this morning: "Build a house with a floor, with a floor, with a floor. Build a house with a wall, with a wall, with a wall. Build a house with a roof, with a roof, with a rooooooooof..." Of course, the house didn't turn out too well in the song, but the fact remains: you can be endlessly creative in your designing, but any house still has to have some kind of roof, walls, and a floor. As well as a place to sleep, a place to prepare food, and somewhere to, shall we say, shed the unwanted food....

Story Engineering, by Larry Brooks, is a little like this. It's a book on how to plan and build a story or screenplay - explaining all the work a writer should do before beginning to write, in order to have a winning story at the end. As opposed to flying by the seat of your pants (pantsing, Brooks calls it) in the hopes that if you just start writing it will all work out in the end.

When I first started reading this book, to be honest I wondered if it might kill the creativity, making storytelling clinical and formulaic. Like he was saying, "You want to build a house? Here's a photo of one. Do that." But as I got a little further in, and Brooks began giving guidance on the six core competencies, I began to see that they weren't formulaic at all.

What this book does is explains what a wall needs to be. And a roof. And a floor. And then the author says, "Once you've got that, feel free to go crazy! But just make sure it's got those elements." After all, a house without walls would be a little impractical (where would you hang photos?...).

I would recommend this book to any aspiring writer. It really is helpful and freeing. It's enjoyable to read (if sometimes a little repetitive, but I could understand why). You're not guaranteed to have a bestseller if you master these six competencies of storytelling, but it's highly likely you'll have a flop if you don't.

Different

What makes Christians different to others? According to Tom Wright, it's humility, patience, chastity and charity.

I reckon that sums it up pretty well. May we grow more and more into these virtues, and help others become part of the family and do the same.

Little Miss Dentist

I just saw a girl - looked like she was in her twenties, asian, I'm guessing a uni student - wearing this t-shirt. And I must say it worried me a little.

Now it's true that I've been to the dentist just this morning, and it's probably only because of this that I noticed the shirt in the first place. But am I wrong to think there's something amiss here?

Would you want this girl to be your dentist?

I remember Mark Sayers speaking about the Japanese culture of "cute" - I hope I'm explaining this right - flattening everything, including the deeper, important things into the cute and fluffy and trivial. At heart it's a bit of an avoidance of anything deep or potentially painful. "Oh it's nothing. Just a bit of fun. I'm not really serious about it."

And I must say, since hearing Mark say that, I have seen these ideas in our culture a lot.

Anyone else got some thoughts on this?

Have you seen this happening anywhere?